10 Inspiring Places For Blog Ideas

Have you ever sat staring at your monitor (or notebook with pen in hand) ready to gush all your knowledge but instead drew a blank?

Of course you have, it happens to everyone.

When I first started ghost-writing for a few select clients, the blog ideas came relatively quickly and easily. The site owners fed me a lot of the core material so it was just a matter of sprinkling in a story, driving home a useful point or lesson, and including a call to action.

Then I started a personal pet project that required me to come up with all new material. That’s when I locked up at the keyboard thinking, “Yikes, I got nothin.”

Luckily, I already knew where to find blog ideas because I researched what other writers and business owners were having success doing.

The main thing is you can’t work in a vacuum. Get out of your own head. Write for your readers by researching what’s “out there” and see which topics are trending.

Here is your list of 10 hot spots to yank you out of the confines of your own head and help you crank out your next blog post:

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is designed to help you research the keywords and phrases people type into Google search.

For example, if you use the tool to search for, “ideas for a blog post,” your first few results are shown below:

From that list you could be inspired to write a blogging software review which is a topic that receives solid monthly search volume. Granted, the picture above shows the “broad” search phrase not the exact phrase. The phrase “blog software” truly only receives 8,100 exact searches per month as of this writing.

This is a great tool to use to find out what people are saying on Twitter. It’s a search tool that you could, for example, type in “new golf club” and you’ll find people tweeting about golf clubs. You’ll scroll through tweets about new golf clubs, golf clubs people just bought, ones they want to buy or where online they found a sale on golf clubs.

Here in item #3 you get two-for-one, CNN and Cosmo. At CNN you can find current events to use for creating connections to your topics people wouldn’t ordinarily make.

Cosmo has the allure of gossip and the types of headlines that make you look over your shoulder before reading them aloud. Cosmo-inspired blog ideas are great for curiosity clicks and certainly useful for turning the ol’ gears.

This approach is a bit different but it forces you to think like your reader. When you visit Yahoo answers you’ll be able to type in a question and click the Search Y! Answers box. You don’t have to sign in and formally ask the Yahoo Answers community, just use the Search function below the main area.

Use the language of your audience when entering your question. You’ll see results of similar questions and then BAM! An instant Q&A or How-To blog post.

Any photo-sharing site will probably do but since I use Flickr for my blog posts I’m recommending it. If you have an email account with Yahoo, you can log into Flickr and start browsing photos. You can search for something generic like, “colors,” and watch the random photos that pop up.

Personal Development for Smart People is a treasure trove of ideas for a blog post. A great place to start with this site is by browsing the Archives page.

8. Write a “Best Of” List

If you use this “best of” approach you can link out to each resource you cover in your post. Think of your top 10 tech sites, top 5 copywriting websites, or your favorite personal development sites and write a short blurb about each one.

Your readers will appreciate seeing numerous quality resources all in one article and you increase your chances of having them bookmark it for future reference.

9. Take a Contrarian View

Simply choose a popular topic and play Devil’s Advocate. Try to put a contrarian spin on a given set of beliefs about product xyz. One caveat: don’t over-use this technique. Unless you’re always cynical you’re going to wear out the magic of taking the opposing view if you do this too often.

10. Personal Anecdote

You have plenty of unique stories so share one with the world! Inject some drama, paint vivid word pictures, and drive home an important lesson. Make it storytelling time and have FUN or crack a joke; your readers may be craving some comedy.

Your Blog Inspiration

Blog ideas can come from anywhere. Every time you step outdoors just look around you. Breathe in your environment and challenge yourself to view life through a new lens.

So how about it? Did I forget to mention your favorite blog-inspiring hot spot? Feel free to share yours in the comments.

Great list! Believe me, I know how frustrating it can be to sit down ready to write and find out that you have absolutely no idea what to say

One tool I’d add – Wordtracker’s Keyword Question tool (found here – http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions/). All you do is enter the keyword you’re targeting and it spits back a list of questions people are asking about your niche. VERY useful in putting together SEO friendly, yet informative posts.

Hi Jon,
How are you. I would add blog hopping to the list. The ideas you can get from other bloggers are huge.
I never get stuck for new posts.
Top tip, don’t forget to write the ideas down somewhere, you will forget otherwise.
Great informative post Jon, Thanks
Pete

[...] to notice) that I like to implement, test and report findings on new strategies. This article was inspired by a similar post from Ana Hoffman’s Traffic Generation Cafe that encouraged people to share [...]

Those are great suggestions, Jon! And you told me something I didn’t know.

I didn’t realize that using the Google adwords keyword tool doesn’t give you the exact number of searches for that word or phrase. So if I am trying to get a guesstimate of what to expect, it could be significantly less than I see on the chart.

Something else that I do is look at the stats for my blog to see which phrases have been used to find my blog.

I also get ideas from people’s comments.

Now I can add your suggestions to my toolbox. I had forgotten about magazines, that’s a good one!

I like your list, though some may not apply to me as much. For one, there is so much negative news in CNN that I dont want to touch it.

I love StevePavlina’s blog. It’s a bundle of great posts and an arena of ideas.

It could be frustrating to seek a QUALITY post to write and feel stuck. Several times I have dumped my laptop in frustration because i was not flowing like I should and after taking a break i get a jolt of inspiration and it flows from there.

Wow, great list Jon! Well done my friend. You gave me some great ideas I never thought about before.

Okay, so I probably won’t go with Cosmopolitan anytime soon but Steve’s blog sounds interesting. I usually get ideas when I’m blog commenting and a particular topic may be written about a lot. I try to see what they didn’t say or how I can put a different spin on it since so many people seem to be writing about it. Sometimes I come up short so I have to think up something else! But great ideas. Will bookmark this post and come back to it when I’m ready to write my next post.

Sure, Adrienne. Glad this is useful to you. Truth be told I’m like you in that we both find inspiration from blog surfing and I also get inspired hearing radio ads and seeing tv commercials. Good luck on your next article!

Great addition to the list here, thanks. Yes, social blogging communities are certainly inspiring places for your next blog. We’ve seen it at the Clever Marketer community and some topics spanned several websites from a single post.

Hi Jon, many of those ideas I would have never thought of to be honest.

I do however like to read other blogs. Not necessarily for inspiration, sometimes just ‘to read’… and it’s funny how many times they might say ‘something’ that is not even related to the particular post, but causes a brain wave for me… in often a different direction. I have gotten so much better at ‘writing’ the ideas down while I have them… as well as “why” I’m writing the idea down… as sometimes I forget what was so great about it in the first place!! ha ha… it must be age!

I also like trying to just pay attention to simple things in life. In fact I will be writing one that was triggered by a random act of kindness by my son today at school.

There are times as you say Im about as stumped as a coconut… particularly when we had the Prove It Challenge…70 posts in 90 days. Personally I think it was because “I HAD to”… now I don’t ‘HAVE” to… I can create a post out of cooking a roast for crying out loud.

Jayne – Good job writing down the ideas as they come. It’s easy to let those good ideas and flashes of inspiration and genius slip by. Looks like we’re in for a nice article from you since it’s inspired by a random act of kindness. I’m happy you enjoyed this one.